Respites invite some confusion; otherwise they would not have earned the term. Amidst a respite one finds oneself breathing more easily, and for those who hope to respire better than before, relief does almost suffice as a formal indicator of the condition. Yet, fear that in duration the period will prove shorter, not longer, may as it were choke everything off to a still earlier ending, and this consequence the nature of the sought-for interval did help to bring on. Around the breathing-space walls soon will close in, as though perversely to reprove – to repulse what was too quick an exhalation. Perhaps after all nothing had been properly readied; one’s haste turned about and took shape as a fault which provokes the counter-result.
Then this unforeseen outcome, if it supervenes, may disconcert those over whom its shadow were to hover. By this dark occurrence not simply will respiration fare poorly once again, no: what is more, the active retrospection which the word “respite” signifies etymologically, possibly against the expectations of those who had let their sense of it be guided by its proximity with “respire,”* is thwarted, nor perhaps could such a look backwards even take wing to begin with.
* Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, s. vv. “respite” (both noun and verb)
Reflection upon the shapes of respite in order to fathom the confusions which may strike one’s assessment of the interval, evinces a notable pathos of immediacy at a moment like the present, as the twelve months of 2024 are counting down, when it seems the world’s calamitous onrush to strife and mayhem might very soon be brought to a halt, albeit fitfully and provisionally. Yet before all of it terminates, if it even does, the imminent sudden stop may prompt melancholic flights of thought not solely to whisk in retrospect over the years just passed through, but also to circle about the quite puzzling thing, retrospection itself; while at the same time arousing the great anger that remains one of the most apt of responses to the worst which was permitted to transpire, indeed to the sheer likelihood that much the same could persist or even worsen further. And then thinking’s inclination to sadness, from one side, and choleric present-mindedness, from another, may enter into mixtures whose effects anyone would be hard pressed to estimate in advance. Were the alloy better, they might somehow augment one another, an outcome tending towards the auspicious, as regards the breathing-space itself and its tenuous integrity. Or, rather more likely perhaps, the two temperaments would go together less than well, whereby each comes to impede the other on several fronts: such that not only some respite’s own vagaries of breath but its defining limits themselves constrict it and detract from its quality as refuge, unleashing the asphyxia latent within it, foreshortening the period bestowed upon it.
Beset from numerous angles, ill-advised to count upon the intercession of any hope against hope, retrospection will only seldom attain a truly clear-eyed vision. Nor, most often, do the days set apart furnish to the look backwards lenses strong enough for it to rely on; while the consequences to be drawn – with due respect – from this preterity, do tend to be less than fit to reckon with. Celebrations and commemorations, in theory, should elicit thoughtful consideration of times past, but the assurance that it can endure, is weak. Inherent in them, countervailing the formal definition of their aims, there are also springs of excitement which, in imparting some passion to the proceedings, can affect how participants respire, possibly with untoward results; then obscurity could befall the insight those moments otherwise might bring.
This year marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first important work by Goethe. Opportunity beckons, therefore, for revisiting his novel and its circumstances, which were too closely entwined with the action not also to merit some attention. Thus the affinities between the protagonist and his life and temperament, throughout the pages of this epistolary fiction, and some figures, features, and facets of life as it was lived amidst the great changes of the eighteenth century, nearby in the German realms and further afield elsewhere, though the better Wertherians are aware of them, do deserve a few words by way of review. Assessment of the work and a number of its contexts, however, I will venture sparingly, that the text itself not be slighted, nor its particular situation. Long ago as its debut by now may be, sometimes even a distance like this can dissipate into air, upon closer if not critical examination.
Suicide, as any reader knows, is the denouement of the action, and thus this novel offers it as an abiding topic of reflection. In doing so it affiliates its thought with the concerns of some of the sharpest observers throughout the course of the century. Early on, in the locales where the deed was typically encountered, in England after the Acts of Union, this act that at first glance seemed so inexplicable then prompted further reflection about what had led to it and, of an equal interest, what it might lead to: the motives and the meaning. Moreover, even where none could plausibly be identified, that difficulty itself already began to seem significant in the eyes of the sharpest hommes de lettres, considering these matters dispassionately from across the Channel, men such as Montesquieu, who, evidently discerning more and more therein the further he pondered them, pursued the topic in each of his main works. Nor must one have been a foreigner to intuit the whole question’s great importance, for, amongst his counterparts in London, amidst the cohorts of urbane and incisive satirists, John Arbuthnot did also regard it as a source of puzzlement, an intellectual problem eliciting an uneasy laughter while at the very same time the apprehension that there a grave problem was in fact posed, whether its challenge had been widely noticed or hardly even seen.
In one attempt to fathom it, rather more specifically than did the French author, he approached the matter under the aspect of human temperament, albeit with a bit of prudent subtlety. His treatment is found in the semi-anonymous* satire entitled The Most Wonderful Wonder, That ever appear’d to the Wonder of the British Nation, issued in 1726. Prompted by his own brief pedagogical experience as the tutor to whom was entrusted the feral child recently discovered in a forest near Hannover and then brought to London, where the foundling became the fulcrum of a craze in the literary and the learned world, providing so it seemed a live demonstration of what bare human nature was, a specimen without any education nor even much language to speak of, thereby arousing enthusiasm on the part of philosophical and political thought, Arbuthnot seized the chance to reflect upon the conditions of his times as though that way of life were best regarded from the exterior, a satirical vantage-point distinct from it. Not some foreigners relaying their views in epistolary exchange while traveling, but visitors yet more alien to the country and its tempo, characters barely human though quite aware and articulate when conversing in their own tongue amongst themselves, therefore, figured in his work as protagonists. Their itinerary need not be detailed; of most interest is an observation about human nature as met with in England: one which underscores its sheer mutability and the manifold impetus at work in it, whereby in certain cases the whole person can move at once towards the utmost.
* Authorship was often credited to Jonathan Swift, but the text appears in the first volume of Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot (1751).
Listen to the colloquy between the Bear and the Boy whom she had raised in the wild and who was brought along with her. It is of human beings in general that he speaks – but here his reference is implicitly to their nature as displayed amidst the circumstances of England. For indeed his attention has been caught by one quite specific temperament and its possible consequences. They are so fickle in their Temper, that they resolve one thing this Minute, and the contrary the next; and their Hatred is so violent when provoked, that they will wish the most cruel Mischiefs even to themselves; nay, they go farther, and put themselves to Death. – After this moral anatomy-lesson she exclaims: Ridiculous Animal which pursues Annihilation – with clear astonishment, shaking her head in wonderment at the strange spectacle, as a reader might be inclined to append, by way of adding a stage-direction to their humorous dialogue.
What could be the dominant type in the alloy of this temperament, if not the choleric? To be sure, a quantum of the melancholic would seem to be mixed in, when under some particular circumstances such a temperament were to loose the reins it held over itself, such that its inner violence, its own severe hatred, would be called forth, in the literal sense be provoked, and eventuate in action aimed back at it itself, not eschewing an extreme of self-inflicted cruelty and even death, that is to say, suicide. And moreover, to reach this degree of temperature, very possibly a touch of sanguine fire might also contribute; but these other sorts of temperament would achieve nothing of the result around which the satirist circled with accents of disbelief, without the sine qua non of a great choler. – Such perhaps was the idea availed to an observer with a certain quality of distance from all he saw of the country’s conditions generally and the capital’s more particularly, during the 1720s.
Ire as a sentiment can set a match to the tinder of relationships at any time: this risk seems evident. Easy it would be, however, to underestimate the scope of the effects. General misfortune can quickly descend, as the self-murder which such a temperament could foment (in the absence of safety-valves whereby excessive steam is let out), might by the results destroy far more than an individual alone.
Not only a person, but an entire body politic too would suffer if ire overtakes it, whether in splenetic outbursts or in, worse still, an embrace of the last resort. Fear of the end of everything is not so far-fetched: talking of the “suicide” of a way of life, may be more than a smart paradox or metaphor spoken pour se faire remarquer. Historical and even present-day experience prescribes caution on this very point.
All the more unsettling a prospect, then, when from amongst human relations in their aggregate were elicited the attachments of sentiment to which a major role was assigned by the English polity, during the seventeenth century, and across the Channel by its counterparts, first and foremost in France, in the course of the next, as they sought to uphold their tenuous longevity amidst a raft of new challenges.
Sentimental attachments began to furnish the cement – better, the glue holding the whole political structure together. No need to delve into particulars: let me simply instance the public’s fondness for a royal house, and state that the broad sentiment drew its plausibility, indeed its patency from the habitual attitudes all knew within the domain of family life, both by direct experience and, ever more in England in the seventeenth century and the eighteenth in Great Britain, through the vicarious acquaintance with familial relations which novels and other published works high and low purveyed to continually larger numbers of readers. Other examples of the political function of sentiment I shall not adduce; the major point to underscore, is the republic of letters’ supporting role in the effort of keeping the polity afloat.
Resort to such attachments as a political expedient (an apt term when one views the thing coldly) was made once the obligatory force of the laws had waned, while commercial society generally and its particular branch that is the literary world ascended to prominence not seen before. Probably these large occurrences were an unspoken backdrop to the satire of 1726, and lent the message further point when it portrayed the choleric and the volatile dangers attendant on his pursuits.
In the environs of commercial society and the literary world, human nature, rather than as the relative constant item as which some modes of inquiry delimit it, did receive encouragement to unfold itself, that is, its manifold possibilities, in several ways, for better and for worse. Truth, human nature’s truth such as could flicker intermittently and briefly at this or that moment, would be rendered very tenuous indeed under such circumstances, no longer fit to be relied on, either in theory or in practice, how ever serious or casual the undertaking. An observer might even discover some truth only for the sake of losing it (trouver la vérité pour la perdre).
Perplexing questions did then open up or begin to dawn on the best literary men in London, such as Arbuthnot, and soon enough on their fellows in France, the hommes de lettres during the Ancien Régime’s last decades, like Montesquieu.
So, self-annihilation which occasions laughter: the ursine exclamation is a verdict on human nature and its newfound mutability, as the latter went on fitful display in the capital during the eighteenth century, so easily could its inner integrity be lost or lose itself there. An individual engaged with commercial society on one side, the literary world on another, both loading new pressures, in quantity and quality, onto the human being, this pliable creature (cet Être flexible), needed to conform himself to the thoughts of other people and their impressions (aux pensées & aux impressions des autres) at least somewhat, thereby revealing, and this perhaps indeed for the very first time, that he is capable equally of knowing his own nature when it is shown him or of losing even the sense thereof when he is divested of it (également capable de connoitre sa propre nature lorsqu’on la lui montre, & d’en perdre jusqu’au sentiment lorsqu’on la lui dérobe).* That nature, in other words, has become as modifiable as a garment, as susceptible even to changes in fashion, therefore, not to mention numerous other kinds of alteration. Set amidst the new conditions first in the capital and then elsewhere, it risks joining the store of things of which one will speak only once they are done with.
* De l’Esprit des Loix, vol. i, Préface
Amongst the items addressed at length after they have gone, not the least is spirit, as happened in the case of the major work by Montesquieu. The perplexities that await one who follows his thinking here, I shall merely alert to, encompassing them and the forms of their later appearance by noting that the “esprit des loix” could be ascertained only if the system of law itself already had expired, the inner vital force of obligation breathed its last. – By this route too, one may comprehend something more about the intricate interval that against all odds offers a respite.
Retrospection which anatomises the laws’ spirit can discover something else that comes as a surprise: the spiritedness inherent in the system of law including its principle, which French nomenclature calls “le droit” (and German, “das Recht”), had been intertwined with strict observance of the letter of the laws. In that case, then, weakening the letter, how ever this act was carried out, also struck at the indwelling power in the laws as an aggregate: but sadly this will be awareness which arrives after the fact, in hindsight when it no longer could do any good.
The Parliament of Rouen has made the strongest remonstrances against the new taxes, and refused the register.
The Duke of Harcourt attended them in the King’s name, and commanded the clerks to make the entry. No man uttered a syllable, and the Parliament went away, leaving only the Duke and his Private Secretary in the House. The Secretary then made the entry. Soon after, the Parliament returned, and ordered the entry to be erased from their books.
This is a new and the boldest step which has yet been taken. Four regiments of horse are on their march there. Two other Parliaments have followed the example of that of Rouen. The distress in the provinces is risen to a great height. Paris is as gay as usual. The five last years the Government have been at the expense of several public shows in the city, &c. for the people. The most sensible men here think that this country is on the eve of a great revolution.— John Wilkes, letter to Richard Grenville, August 29, 1763
Laxness in legal matters and the turn to shore up the result, a precarious longevity of the polity, by taking sentimental attachments from their own sphere and modelling public affairs after them – all this describes a political contrivance which could not hold up under pressure. Its faltering is there in upheaval’s first tremor in France during the later decades of the eighteenth century, with the country’s national debt starting to pile up after the loss in North America, already some twenty-five years prior to the outbreaks of 1789.
Obligation as a real compulsion, characteristic of the system of law at its heyday (whenever that was!), differs markedly from the sentiment of being obligated, the feeling typical of the bonds within households and families. One ought to, indeed must distinguish between the two, when reviewing this history, even if granting their overlap in anyone’s individual experience (fully separate they never were!); all the more as on those private ties it was that the relations in the polity were then configured – until the tenuous arrangement in turn split apart. Subsequently one’s sense of being duty-bound to obligate oneself, paled into the vaguer awareness of a state of indebtedness which one still felt it needful to honour, though refusal to do so did remain a possible choice, becoming at times even desirable.
At just this crux the idea of guilt could come into a sharper focus than previously – perhaps its appearance too was formed in part as an effect of a look backwards. But be that perspectival question as it may: from today’s vantage-point one can infer plausibly that the continuity of the French political structure was imperilled. An observation by a spectator across the Channel, Edward Young, lends greater strength to the conjecture. In a later volume of his Night-Thoughts the poet offered some pointed words for France. A Land of Levity, is a Land of Guilt. Now, prima facie, the statement disparages the nation’s characteristic insouciance generally and, in more specifically political terms, its failing to avert the dangers into which it was manœuvring itself by stages. Yet grammatically the remark is reversible, and thus it conveys, when turned on its head, an affirmation that the country’s indulgence in “guilt” does explain and account for its usual “levity.” Then each correlates to the other; and so his sentence, now neither a fierce denunciation of the culpable, nor even a blasé outline of some causal linkage, instead turns the curious public’s mind to that other element from which those two attributes both appeared to stem: namely, the sum of sentimental attachments still assuring but barely the polity’s integrity, that whole system floundering in swift decline and emitting the “levity” and the “guilt” alike as by-products of its decay.
What might come thereafter, the English author would likely have preferred not to address directly. The retrospective vantage by which he assembled his findings, is significant in its own right; and the type of person for which, indeed the sort of temperament for whom he had the most appeal, whether at home or amongst his readers abroad, his next words did specify. A Serious Mind is the native Soil of every Virtue; and the single Character that does true Honour to Mankind.* This semi-solitary figure would incline towards preterity and pensive consideration, traits which, certainly at first sight, would seem to distinguish, even to isolate him from those over whom sway was held by choler. Hence, one gathers, in those cases where ultimately he did elect to carry out the same last act as they, he would arrive at it by another route.
* The Complaint, vii, The Preface
Little wonder that this attitude would strike such a chord in the German realms amongst the young. There the decline of obligation as the mainstay of the system of law and the substitution for it of sentimental attachments, transpired later and still less well than across the Rhine, not to mention the Channel, and in response the desire grew to separate oneself if only in thought from one’s narrow environs.
Futilities against which even gods would have fought in vain, were felt heavily long before the downpours of the Sturm und Drang. Meanwhile, some humanitas, as ideal and in practice, supplied critical ferment to the dusty fields of literature.
Amongst the semi-solitaries who were the crème de la crème in the life of German letters, an especial delicacy of feeling for distances, those between human beings but also, notably, between particular ideas and even the tiny elements of language, made itself known if not manifest, starting around 1750, on the pages of Lessing.
Pauses, slender or sly, his prose conveys marvellously by its usage of the slightest grammatical signs, punctuation marks other than the full stop. The commas and the semicolons are so very eloquent, so very filled with thought, so very meaningful (so beredt, so gedankenvoll, so bedeutsam), for coming from him a pause appears how ever informally to remark on, to point out the interposition of a distance. Yes, each suggests this sotto voce; shouting is not their style. – While as regards their counterparts, the long dashes (Gedankenstriche), his pen knew just where to put them, neither too sparing nor excessive in sharing the experience these marks are so well-equipped to signal, the moments at which a mind alights amidst the flux on every side of its thoughts, the better to hearken to, to comprehend, and to enjoy the sound of it all. Hence the situating of the long dashes lets one know that wherever it went this author’s mind remained the centre of attention; whereas writers of the more common sort, less judicious, less considerate, less attractive than he, tend to insert dashes when their thoughts run out on them (machen Gedankenstriche, wenn ihnen die Gedanken ausgehen), not infrequent denouements which mortify their self-esteem and its vanity: red-faced then they turn to these stopgaps of grammar, thereby clarifying why hustling and bustling throughout their writings there are so many of those dashes (es gibt in ihrem Schriften so viel solcher Striche), because soon enough the profusion will give their little game away. He, on the other hand, kept distant from any expense of spirit, and then dashes come whenever he noted too many thoughts converge into a momentary surfeit (Gedankenstriche kommen, wenn bei Lessing zu viel Gedanken in einen Moment zusammenströmen). So, in his hands, these invitations to more able readers to fathom the currents of thought whose collisions he wisely left unwritten, the significant dashes, speak minimally and maximally at once, to one part of the reading public. The silence they denote, for the latter, is the most eloquent (sie bezeichnen das beredteste Schweigen).*
* Kuno Fischer, Lessings Nathan der Weise, xi (with adjustments in syntax)
Friendship of some kind was being offered to and requested from those capable of hearing what he said by not saying it – this point I think it plausible to educe from his own writings, by way of demarcating what the high variety of amity that exists between peers could be and could do. Admittedly, in order to amplify the idea, the remarks of his commentator are construed rather against their grain, accentuating in the English renditions (some are more paraphrase than strict translation) a few soft German undertones whose sound may be easily mistaken or else not caught at all (aberrant imputation always poses a risk). But bypassing this issue in favour of the question concerning the temperament of him who would be and would have a friend: one wonders how nearly he resembles the “Serious Mind” the English poet had lauded. Melancholy evidently typifies both, but perhaps not to similar degrees.
Conceivably there is divergence in the quantum of solitude each desires for his life; this remains a topic. Others’ notations of some reticence come to mind; particularly an admission that Werther entrusted to the post. I prefer not resorting to dashes (ich mache nicht gern Gedankenstriche), to his friend he averred in one missive, here, however, I can’t express myself otherwise – and, it seems to me, clearly enough (aber hier kann ich mich nicht anders ausdrukken – und mich dünkt deutlich genug).* – Well, certain parts of letters a reader would prefer to have missed, and amongst them this statement; perusing it regardless, his own embarrassment one does feel twice over, first with him from afar, in the sympathy of a sestercentenary, vicariously, but then also with strange immediacy over against the correspondent’s person: for one’s eyes these lines were not meant, and a reader is hard pressed not to flinch. – So I think, anyhow. – Let me continue.
* Die Leiden des jungen Werthers,
vol. ii, letter of October 10, 1772
Although another author belonging to the select number who suffered under the narrowness of literary and political life during those years in the German realms, albeit not in vain, since they did entrust their works to posterity, had a quite jovial side, nonetheless at least a twinge of melancholy was not alien to Lichtenberg.
In his writings one may discern something akin to the other’s subtle awareness of the nearby and the far-off, as fleeting as both can be. Feeling of this kind, wrongly called sentiment, bespeaks tristesse at how everything did once occur and does still transpire, that distances should have assembled to begin with, or, an other inkling, that there be distance at all. And perhaps one would err by terming any such fine sensitivity melancholy, even if the mistake itself then could bring forth the thing in question. But regardless, vistas or listening-posts of language mæstri like these two German authors were virtually meant to chance upon, for each became the portals onto distances that weigh the most and the distinctions amongst them. Hence what stemmed from it, the pensiveness of them who did tarry awhile at vantage-points like those, today too so long afterwards one does wrong to misprise. (Insensitivity such as this, is a small offence with no applicable statute of limitation to excuse it.)
Goethe, years later, spoke finely of his temperament with one pithy sentence. His departed peer’s writings we can avail ourselves of, as a most wondrous divining rod (wir können uns als der wunderbarsten Wünschelruthe bedienen). Not simply an instrument of excavation, therefore, but also to detect what to avoid. Better readers should heed the traces of attentive mien even in his outward jollity and his jests: wherever he has a bit of fun (wo er einen Spaß macht) with his pen, there a problem rests hidden (ein Problem liegt verborgen).* In some cases, then, probably he felt that one should not prod nor poke it, and his soft joke was actually a tactful word of prudence; with good reason one ought to leave its concealment unscathed. Such notations were hints and clues given in order to forestall a baleful disclosure, for, there where it rests, it poses no real problem, but it would do so or become one if unearthed. Hence, having pondered this whole situation as a reader may assume he had done, one starts to discern a substantial fund of sadness in Lichtenberg.
* Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, vol. iii, bk. iii, “Aus Makariens Archiv”
Halting to reflect on this lode of thought, what then?* The human sense of humour should not dig straight into the lower sediments of language, lest items otherwise buried come to the surface; in the worse cases, hard questions pose themselves, such as how these inhumations came about, why, when, by whom they had been carried out, and the like: yet from the other faculties to which these matters would have to be referred, the penchant for mirth if wise should keep some distance. All this is a quandary. – While even in its lighter excavations, the results, for those who remain above ground, linguistically speaking, might prove far from funny.
* Where ever is a problem not hidden, under the surfaces of life and language?
Yet even if this entire stratified region is foresworn – for the implicit idea of depth might simply be a further instance when words play with us – even so this author’s feeling for the distances in language can mark out the inconspicuous humour of words as they vacillate horizontally, over the course of their lives, etymologically and semantically. Each word strays from what it once was, always ranging by its usage away from the place whence it hails (es rückt immer durch den Gebrauch von seinem anfänglichen Platz), and this trajectory true lovers of words should follow in thought. Where in future it might go, tending more likely downward than upward (eher hinab als hinauf) in quality, they may hesitate to guess; but these philologists’ attention will remain on what the word has been, as that is the best of the markers in these fields. Here retrospection has no substitute, for the elementary reason that by the vicissitudes of the word those of concepts are known (an der Wandelbarkeit des Worts läßt sich die Wandelbarkeit der Begriffe erkennen).* Whether cool or warm, far or near, everyone if philological does grant it, later or sooner. – Yet love is just one way words are chased; there will be others. No words are made up for whatever is not known (on n’invente pas de mots pour ce qu’on ne connait pas).**
* Maximen und Reflexionen, Über Literatur und Leben, 983
** Charles Villers, “Sur la manière essentiellement différente
dont les Poètes français et les allemans traitent l’Amour,” 20
Although his training was in law, Goethe quickly found troublesome the profession’s diction and the less-than-hidden war it continually pursued by other means, a dispiriting burden he did not wish to bear; then the young poet, child of peace (Kind des Friedens)* as he was, bade that line of work farewell, transplanting himself to the congenial fields of literature. But the immersion in jurisprudence and the legal world, everything one may plausibly surmise he learned of them, lends warrant to a reader who finds throughout his debut book a large awareness of the dilemmas of political life in those German statelets, wherein the old order declined ever further and rapidly, throughout the years when obligation was deserting the laws, while reliance in its stead on the attachments of the sentimental also began to loose upon the public realm, weak though were its claims, two consorts known to the learned and the literary and even the private person, enthusiasm (Schwärmerei) and hypocrisy (Heuchelei), both spoiled fruit of sentimentality itself.
* letter to Johann Gottfried Herder, October 12, 1787
Yes, one has cause, a reason lodged not merely in hindsight’s perspectival benefits but mainly in the thing itself, to read his novel ears keen for the great impending upheavals. Quite different in kind than the early rumblings in the English colonies or in France, nonetheless the 1774 book also counts as a revolutionary harbinger, though cast in the negative. For these letters did comprise cautionary notes, then already, not least because the correspondent was misheard on the other side of vexation’s somber interstitial spaces (die düstern Zwischenräume des Verdrusses),* his plaintive tones received and dismissed evidently even by his friend, perhaps as instances of unserious play-acting, some youthful show of Weltschmerz, following the fashion of the time. Heed ought to have been paid more seriously: perhaps this lesson was gleaned on the work’s appearance by those it did not catch off guard. – Ah, man being made such that he can be persuaded to do the most adventurous things (der Mensch ist so gemacht, daß man ihm das abenteuerlichste überreden kann), the first impression does find us willing (der erste Eindruk findet uns willig), yet then recklessness so tightly traps (das haftet aber auch gleich so fest) one who would as soon erase and be rid of it (der es wieder auskrazzen und austilgen will)** that he may wish he hadn’t if he tries; and so did everything transpire here. In the case of this temperament the novel portrayed from within, melancholy proved to be both character and fate, overwhelming the protagonist and through him many readers, while by the ineradicable mark it made doing much to foment in the world at large something that was perhaps even more than an event.
* vol. ii, letter of December 4, 1772
** vol. i, letter of August 15, 1771
Delving into the letters is not my plan; it is enough to propose that the novel draws upon the springs of Weltschmerz in order to sprinkle a comic humour subtly over the dark action. While his epistolary remarks have some heft and a few might be selected and given a place in a volume of ingenuous wit, nonetheless these seem rather greener than evergreen; and therefore I take Werther himself at his word when he insists it is necessary that nothing be plucked before it is ripe (es ist nöthig, daß nichts gepflükt werde, eh es reif ist)* – even though, if one thinks his life needs to figure in the early chapters of any worthwhile history of nihilism and nihilists, this very sentence, from the novel’s last dated letter, will ring with an unexpected charge. Indeed, nearly pining after a capital letter and the definite article, it does contain a “nothing” (nichts); then, heeding this small hint accordingly (assuming it is one), and asking neither quite in jest nor quite in earnest, while hoping to keep pathos at enough of a distance, one could reply, When ever is Nothing ripe to pluck?
* vol. ii, letter of December 20, 1772
Already before the first coinage of the word “nihilism” (Nihilismus), the thing itself was known. It appeared not quite coevally with the new cult of sentiment, for soon that very undertaking did require some culling of the fruits.*
* Yes, this summary does simplify terribly, yes; but in context it’s not uncalled for. – In an earlier essay, one item of interest was the debut occurrence of “Nihilismus.” Perhaps by no mere co-incidence this year also marks the word’s sestercentenary.
Things which never quite ripen by themselves, so that for the harvest’s sake an act of nihilism must supervene, minor or major, on their own or others’ behalf: this is an awful possibility to come across, whether in inner or private life, how ever full one otherwise deems these surroundings, or in the public realm, barren though it be; but the unripe is what readers run into again and again and again in the novel, and the iterating of this discovery may kindle their readerly sorrow (Leid). All the more should they feel it, when reminded from page to page how prone to reading the protagonist himself was, how melancholic; for this one temperament, probably unlike the others, tends always to dwell on itself, a ruminative self-reflexive trait which turns its subjects into mere vessels, especially if the risk of it is dismissed carelessly or dealt with too cautiously. – But will that feeling ever be theirs?
For they themselves may fall under the sway of just such an outright melancholy.
He does not ripen properly who reads himself too often: that was one main lesson of this novel, though it fell on deaf ears. Moreover, there exists a threshold beyond which only a final act ever resolves the discontents of unripeness prolonging itself; while to push the melancholic towards that point of no return, or else past it once reached, some jolt from the other temperaments, whether alloyed by nature to his, or learned of through literature and imbued and owned by artifice, is requisite: that was a second lesson, of greater difficulty than the first, even less likely to be heard or understood by those in need of it. Melancholy awaited them instead.
Over the meeting of the novel and its public, what shadows of a comedy of errors! Soft admonitions against Heuchelei and Schwärmerei, perhaps also a whispered intuition that both were faces of a single attitude, fomented even louder outbursts of it all, an even more blatant unleashing of the cult of sentiment! – that intoxicant fashion, concurrent with rapid growth of the publishing trade itself, brought to the market in a welter of editions, not a few retailed for the impressionable young.
What might happen when polities, in support of their own continuance, turned to utilise permutations of the very changeable sentiments first described in works of literature, mainly novels and some plays, the initial signs of upheaval in the 1760s began to portend; sentimental effusions wrought into the substance of public life soon eventuated in revolutionary explosions. However, during the next years, in the course of the revolutions, some immunity, along with a number of remedies for, and even antidotes to the excesses of political sentimentality were developed during the course of gaining new experience if not also acumen in politics itself. But with all this the German realms had nearly no direct acquaintance; literature and its institutions remained the scene of action instead, and so there one looks for the emergence of a countervailing force from out of the cult of sentiment itself.
One hardly need seek long: the best example is the development gone through after his debut by Goethe. A younger contemporary, Germaine de Staël, summed up the salient points with finesse: here I select the most pertinent and intersperse a few further notations, maintaining it all in the present tense, as seems right in this case. (At times retrospection and its questions are unwanted.)
Not granting it control like some hommes de lettres do, deferring to society’s game of pleasing and being pleased though they seem impetuously to flout it, instead he dominates even his own talent (domine même son talent).* In this crucial regard he has improved since his later youth, for then perhaps he was possessed by his genius, rather than being its master (peut-être alors étoit-il possédé par son génie, au lieu d’en être le maître). First experience of poetic inspiration from the inside may well have conferred on him an aching awareness how, if the highest encounters never are more than momentary in man’s heart (momentanés dans le cœur de l’homme), then in point of fact the poet is inferior to the inspiration that moves him, and cannot judge it without losing it (le poëte est inférieur à l’inspiration qui l’anime, et ne peut la juger sans la perdre). The sad Montesquieuesque situation of an “esprit” that can only be assessed once it has vanished, or disappears just as it is espied, musty air of the chancelleries from which he fled wafting through, still weighed on his mind, evidently; the passing by so quickly of the forms of things, these semblances which comprise phenomenal or perceptual indices of the frustration and even torment the retrospective orientation inflicts upon itself by its own penchant for judgement (when not otherwise diverted), continued to tempt him with melancholy: though by the very trial he came to realise how another idea of truth and poetry might lift him above those perplexities. Without much delay he attained a standpoint where glances backwards generally are pointless, for time has turned him into a spectator (le temps l’a rendu spectateur) in the full sense; he, a pictorial in the poetic realm, now composes his works as tableaux. A reflective stance largely different than the melancholic’s pensiveness helps bring it about that he is not affected by life, and that he only describes it as a painter (qu’il n’est pas atteint par la vie, et qu’il la décrit seulement en peintre): well-tempered, as the heat of his thoughts still do suffice to enliven everything (la chaleur de ses pensées suffit encore pour tout animer) in the depictions. Alongside them the passions had furnished a large share of warmth; no longer do they glow as hot, and now he sets more value on the tableaux he shows us than on what experience he has of the emotions (il attache plus de prix maintenant aux tableaux qu’il nous présente qu’aux émotions qu’il éprouve).** But even so, the most characteristic thing, his great ability in composing these pictures, the poet’s debut already honed. That work indeed looks ahead, for in his vision it is not only the suffering wrecked by love, but also the afflictions of the imagination in our century, which he knew how to portray (ce ne sont pas seulement les souffrances de l’amour, mais les maladies de l’imagination dans notre siècle, dont il a su faire le tableau).
* By contrast, a Schwärmer, one of a numerous tribe even though each fancies himself so unique, often enough is also a Heuchler, a poseur who always adjusts his performances to the gallery: under both aspects he submits to his own abilities.
** De l’Allemagne, vol. i, pt. ii, ch. vii
Amongst the maladies the poet’s talent had allowed him to paint, was the tumult and waywardness of squads of thoughts pressing upon the mind without one being able to change them into acts of the will (pensées qui se pressent dans l’esprit sans qu’on puisse les changer en actes de la volonté). A condition the fashionable cult of sentiment abets intensively, and behind it the sheer growth of publishing, from the last decades of the century onwards. Upon the mind those many thoughts can indeed press, and from what source do they hail if not all the materials put into print? From the latter emanate effects no one should underestimate, precisely because they can catalyse so insidiously yet also so suddenly. So the damage to the power of volition in heads incapacitated from within by thought-surfeits, may be likened to the overwhelming sensations on the edge of an abyss (sur le bord de l’abîme), when vertigo throws into inaction the deliberative faculties of them who linger there, such that the very fatigue induced by contemplating it for a long time can lead one to take the plunge (la fatigue même qu’on éprouve après l’avoir long-temps contemplé peut entraîner à s’y précipiter).* Possibly then the self-inflicted futility of the mind proceeds to claim its victim, whereupon in turn the sorrow and the suffering produce new fodder for journalism. After a few cycles of this kind are set into motion, an entire syndrome will ramify.
* vol. ii, pt. ii, ch. xxviii
If maladies beset the century’s imagination, as she held, an intractable one struck when his vivid picture of the inadequacy of thoughts with regard to volitions, that common weakness obvious already by the 1770s, was worn down as the tableau’s main idea circulated in so many realms subsequently. The urgent air of it melted away with every further tribute paid directly or indirectly to the poet’s first work. Published by him in order to help avert the peril and heal the illness, instead by the book’s very success the whole problem was compounded, further incentives to inward disorder devised for the young. While his work immunised some against the condition depicted, others were infected or otherwise impaired by the portrait.
The protagonist, she said, or perhaps the novel itself, has caused more suicides than the most beautiful woman in the world (Werther a causé plus de suicides que la plus belle femme du monde). Ponder the remark: in his person the denouement of the cult of sentimentality diverges from any imitation of classical models. Between his passage à l’acte and those it inspired amongst his countrymen and elsewhere too, and the emulation of antiquity Paris put on display in 1789, there is a categorical difference. Ignoring it could only be undertaken if, protestations notwithstanding, one hardly knows the irony and farce in history.* How ever universally true it be that whatever one esteems as art one does want to introduce into real life (ce qu’on admire comme art, on veut l’introduire dans l’existence réelle), nonetheless quite special is the melancholic humour in which one introduces and kills oneself by the very same act. Wertherianism in its land of origin then illustrates shockingly how greater dominion often is held over Germans by poetry, philosophy, and the ideal than by nature and the passions themselves (la poésie, la philosophie, l’idéal enfin, ont souvent plus d’empire sur les Allemands que la nature et les passions même).**
* Nor should the first hints of a Liebestod, which one might albeit anachronistically hear in his deed, be mistaken for presages of any revolutionary event. So gross an error would not lead past but only further into nihilism.
** vol. ii, pt. ii, ch. xvii
A Wertherian cast of mind was not alien to the author, but rather than succumb to its allure, he wrote the book to rid himself of its enticement. The effort amounted to convalescence, indeed, overcoming: this idea a later critic, Karl Hillebrand, could state openly, any cause for diplomatic utterance having long since expired. Sentimentality as a cult of self (Selbst-Cultus) in which each sought to treat his heart as if it were a sickly spoiled child whose every demand must be met (sein Herzchen behandeln wie ein krankes, verwöhntes Kind, dem man jeden Willen thun muß), thereby putting the will into disarray; by describing the whole condition Goethe cured himself of all of it, in particular the sullen espousal of the force of lethargy (Macht der Trägheit)* and the tepid pleasure found while suffering (im Leiden).** Now a different, more energetic mode of activity came to prominence. By putting some bit of himself into Werther, the poet surpassed what he earlier had been. Although the act of suicide figured in this imaginary divestiture, one may infer that the author’s inner mise-en-scène did not include the murder of someone else, for in one essential respect the protagonist’s demise plays the role assigned to fate in the tragedy of antiquity: it resolves a drama otherwise irresolvable (spielt die Rolle des Schicksals in der antiken Tragödie: er löst das anders unlösbare Drama).*** Hence, the resolution secured, this imagination felt no need of killing or otherwise having had killed one self in order to become another; perhaps in this regard as in others, the man’s peace really was peaceable.
* Under this guise what softly announced itself, possibly, was a disposition towards that older melancholic vice, acedia.
** “Die Werther-Krankheit in Europa,” ii
*** iv
Fifty years after the novel first appeared, a commemorative edition was sent out. Around that time he often was casting a lively eye on the great changes in the world, and something of this interest during his final decade may have prompted him to consider issuing the first work anew; while, more specifically, word of the last days of that fellow poet,* a man with whom he had a certain affinity and for whom perhaps he felt some responsibility, Byron, possibly did also suggest how opportunely the anniversary had come to Goethe.
* Edward Blaquiere, Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece, and William Parry, The Last Days of Lord Byron, provide full reports.
After half a century, what hadn’t he observed in the interval! Nearby, the makings of modern polity could be seen, in contrast to the earlier conditions in a country that lacked all public life and in fact led only an inward one for which no healthy fields of activity stood open (das alles öffentlichen Lebens entbehrte, das eigentlich nur ein innerliches Leben führte, dem keine gesunde Thätigkeit offen stand); visible also a few incipient showings of something like public spirit, albeit faltering or wrongly directed at times; and palpable in its rapid growth the world of letters in the widest scope, the universities, the publishing, and the censorship. Probably nowhere would the attentive not have noticed how the ever-greater volume of ideas tended to leave the recipients less than capable of not falling captive to some one which henceforth would be for them an idée fixe. After all, everyone did require some fixed points in the middle of this new flux of immaterial things; and yet whatever assurances were rendered often could prove deceptive in more benign cases, and treacherous in the worse. Like dilemmas were evident on the larger scale, too, most strikingly whenever the intrinsic peculiarity of public opinion (Eigenthümlichkeit der öffentlichen Meinung), that ascendant power in the world, was noticed, namely, that public opinion first recognises a reality only once the latter already has ceased to be real (daß sie die Wirklichkeit erst dann anerkennt, wenn sie schon aufgehört hat, Wirklichkeit zu sein).* Slowness and even stupor as the modus vivendi of the collective (un-)intelligence and its ideas, right in the midst of industrial and technical progress: by this disparity in tempo the early nineteenth century was as though tailor-made to foster the discontent and exasperation the book had portrayed decades before, propelling wave upon wave of this novel and as it proved saleable fashion, Wertherianism.
* “Die Werther-Krankheit in Europa,” i
All this the poet in Weimar knew well; over the decades he had had cause to view his first work with reluctance. Even before the book’s own later youth was gone, around 1800, its protagonist’s cast of mind the author came across in fields where probably he would have neither expected nor liked to find it; perhaps spreading there to deploy its powers of contamination and infection further – as though to spite him? Tones of such suspicion one may hear in his rejoinders to the direction taken by philosophy, especially the critical. Is it the right way (der rechte Weg) if a philosopher seeks to enter into himself (in sich selbst hineingehen) and catch his own mind in the act of carrying out its operations (seinen eignen Geist über seinen Operationen ertappen)? Does not this method represent an applied Wertherianism, in fact, and thus constitute a variety of hypochondria (eine Art von Hypochondrie), cloaking its melancholy under a splendid name (einen prächtigen Nahmen)? And on the practical side, he asked, what good will ever result from digging into oneself (in sich graben) and undermining oneself (sich untergraben) like this? – He closed off the objections politely: please do pardon a practical physician (verzeihen Sie einem practischen Arzte),* with this affirming how well he knew those conditions and casting a bit of light on why he put his admonitions about them so firmly.
* Der Sammler und die Seinigen, Zweiter Brief
A few years after the anniversary, in an observation appended to another novel, he addressed the sheer haste of modern life. That within its purview life passed heedlessly, whether as regards the moments or the hours of the day, improvidently and without foresight, this amounts to the greatest misfortune of our times which let nothing ripen (das größte Unheil unserer Zeit, die nichts reif werden läßt). In these words the reminiscence of his first novel does sound deliberate, and so here too, the Wertherian question seems to loom up.
As the poet, almost as a prescient social critic, saw the matter, the locales of rapidity were intrinsically public in nature; they did pose an implicit demand on everyone that all life be lived as if one were virtually always on the move within them or at least nearby. Thus they became breeding-grounds of Wertherianism and the habitat of its prolonged appeal: for, without immersion in this way of life, though they kept a distance more nominal than real from it, the Wertherians would not have obtained the causes for displays of sorrow they hankered after, one after another, more and more quickly. (If always there had been a Heuchler hidden within any such Schwärmer, now, summoned forth by the increasing speed of contemporary existence, he could not stop himself from peeping out.)
This prospect of a world-society soon to emerge, was drawn bleakly and, on what may be the main point, with a touch of obscurity. No one is permitted to rejoice or suffer except to afford a pastime for the rest (niemand darf sich freuen oder leiden als zum Zeitvertreib der übrigen), he averred, and so it leaps (und so springt’s) – but what this “it” (es) is, the text does not exactly say (though probably haste’s dark impulsion itself was meant) – from house to house, from city to city, from empire to empire, and finally from one part of the world to another part of the world: everything velociferous (von Haus zu Haus, von Stadt zu Stadt, von Reich zu Reich, und zuletzt von Welttheil zu Welttheil, alles velociferisch).* – Over the portmanteau coinage at the end one ought indeed to tarry: especially here the poet says much with little.
* Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, vol. ii, bk. ii, “Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer”
Amidst the global haste: that is where he situated Wertherianism. If so, then he did take note of the new term, for in European parlance it signifies an ailment without apparent cause, one peculiar to the nineteenth century (denn der Wertherismus bedeutet im europäischen Sprachgebrauch ein Uebel ohne anscheinende Ursache, unserem Jahrhundert eigenthümlich). Speed which lorded it “velociferously” over everything in the world, did provoke maladies of mind having no obvious cause: for the author of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers this clarification may have sufficed. Not the conditions of possibility of the phenomena, no, but the broader factors occasioning the self-displays met with amongst the many Wertherians, would have provided the point of intellectual interest to him. In that case, then he concerned himself with forces such as the competitive pressure amongst figures who strove to get themselves noticed within the shorter and shorter spans of time which literature had ready to allot to them, a locale where the challenges required a range of stratagems on their part. Most likely within this context the embrace of a literary fashion, in any corner of the world of letters, took on its full significance.
Maladies of imagination or of the mind generally, in those sectors, were often first feigned, only then becoming inveterate (to put the matter bluntly).* Yet, to abide by the poet’s own frame of mind, this is simply observation and not moral criticism, or if the latter, then only around the edges. Even so, the outcome probably struck close to home as examples accrued where pieces of his novel’s composition were imitated by younger authors who adulterated its character and unity of action in theirs. Would he not have been perturbed to see his protagonist, still an honest fellow relatively speaking, though the twin perils of Heuchelei and Schwärmerei had not been entirely unknown to him, succeeded by a host of others who really did make a show of their faults, passing off vices as virtues with finesse, in acts of which he never would have proved capable? Or to witness, on the other hand, the degree of resolve evident in his novel and its denouement, a formal indication that something in the power of will had been saved despite itself, followed in one early case by a novelistic undertaking premised on the will’s exhaustion? – where the story amounted to no drama (kein Drama), the suicide to no deed (keine Handlung) but merely a vanishment (Verschwinden), the novel itself then only melting away, rather than coming to any resolution (der Roman zergeht, er löst sich nicht). Not to mention later metamorphoses of the protagonist’s discontent he had portrayed! – now translated into a spectacle whose main figure festoons himself in his distress more than that he truly is suffused by it (drapirt sich mehr in seine Schmerz, als daß er wirklich davon durchdrungen ist), set down on a stage where he “sits” before the audience in the most painterly of arrangements and knows just how to cry gracefully and moan elegantly (in den malerischesten Stellungen „sitzt“ er vor dem Publikum, weiß mit Anmuth zu weinen und mit Eleganz zu seufzen). – No, it is not wrong to imagine how disdain in Weimar was inspired by these Wertherians’ patent submission to the taste and the haste of their day. Under the necessities of the literary market in an era of immense expansion, the fruits brought to it tended to age very quickly, while some products of this literature in its decadence could be accounted putrid from their first, without the extenuating circumstance of great longevity, that state of the venerable cultures that do in the end rot away like vegetation grown old (wie die Fäulniß einer alt gewordenen Vegetation)** – and these conditions many amongst the Wertherian epigones did not repudiate but came to accept outright.
* When warranted, Goethe deployed blunt or even at times crude words.
** “Die Werther-Krankheit in Europa,” iv
When the time came to issue the novel again, a minor yet significant change was made in its title. Earlier the protagonist’s name had been written with the genitive suffix attached, in accord with the common practice of applying a strong inflection to such a case of word; now, in keeping with the linguistic standardisation which had taken hold in the interval, by dint not least of the increase in the publishing sector generally, the publication chose to omit the -s after his name, as the definite article des before it did suffice for clarity: for the bibliographers and most everyone else the work took on final form (except for orthographic modernisations).
But surely this is a piece of trivia one hardly need mention? – Not exactly. For the proper name “Werther” seems to signify more widely than in relation to persons: one easily may construe it as referring to an activity or even to some sub-speciality of a profession. At its base is the word “Werth” (which is spelled today without the last letter), worth or value, and then in its active form the term might be applied, perhaps with undertones of humour, to identify an evaluator or assessor. In the case of this protagonist those tones sound quite appropriate, and, underscored as they are by the very title, readers would be unlikely to mistake them, nor the slight ironic distance from him that they seem to propose – were it not for another small grammatical fact. Nach wie vor, in the genitive case this other type of the word’s usage does require the ultimate -s, precisely that which the anniversary edition did eliminate! Hence with it this connotation too was largely effaced; not even the letter of the text could be called on, if one wanted to lend support to the intuition that under a little joke placed at the entrance some matter might indeed be hidden.
Assessment is a topic to bear in mind with regard to the novel. All the more so, as in it various problems which later would call to be grouped under the rubric of nihilism, more than merely adumbrated, pop up en passant. The worth or, more precisely, the value of life and existence itself, is a question which did weigh upon the protagonist; closely tied to it, is the ancillary of how such an evaluation could ever properly be undertaken. Suicide, that abiding philosophical concern, does not merely come as the denouement of the plot nor as the resolution of the drama, but constitutes the perhaps most vital stratum of the work’s very substance. Of course, a cautionary tale is there to be read in the novel; yet somehow the assessment, one hopes in the best case, will serve to augment that which is assessed.
If the effacement (not a further covering-over) of what had been a small hint was done deliberately by the author for the work’s anniversary, what might it suggest? One suspects, once more, the arrival of Wertherianism was on his mind; to it were owed numerous such “assessments,” carried out in both theory and practice, and so perhaps he now felt it his duty, ex officio, to make the significant emendation. On this point too, less may be more; and what this s signified was not nothing. Nor did its absence: no longer was the protagonist a professional, but someone whose name had become a legend, albeit of the sort which discourages reading farther.
Moreover, had he somehow not passed to the act, remaining alive instead, how ever solitary and melancholic the manner of life, after fifty years he would have reached old age; whereas perhaps it is only youth which really can persuade itself to answer his question with that single word-deed of assessment, “Nothing!” The exceptional status it confers may entrance them, insofar as having or even being the exception is what the young want (Junge wollen die Ausnahme), and, as his case shows, they will at least or at last stand out on account of the sheer extremity of it, while by contrast, towards human life’s other pole, the rule (die Regel) is preferred amongst those who make the laws, the old (Gesetze sind von Alten gemacht).* But then, one wonders, with what reluctance would he have found himself in their midst? – what degree of willingness or readiness to consort with them? – where and with whom to realise how even if it is sorrows and cares which one shares with one’s friends, doing so nourishes the delectable feeling that true happiness actually consists only in the partaking (selbst wenn man mit Freunden Leiden und Sorgen theilt, so wird dadurch die köstliche Empfindung genährt, daß eigentlich nur in der Theilnahme das wahre Glück besteht)?** – whether this protagonist’s portrait as an old man could even be conceived, let alone displayed (even though it was not yet the sort to hide in an attic)?
* Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, vol. iii, bk. iii, “Aus Makariens Archiv”
** letter to Sarah von Grotthuß, April 23, 1814
About this anniversary venture there is a whiff of contradiction. When he sent his first great creation into the world again, after so long an interval, can mischievous intent on the poet’s part really be ruled out? But how old or young, in advance of the times or behind them must his contemporaries have been to notice it?
A dedicatory poem introduced the novel on its fiftieth.* Obliquely the nearness and the distance of his creation to the present both come in, in lines wondrously subtle and suggestive; a surfeit of thoughts flows through, while only a single pair of dashes appears. The wistful current of feeling partakes of some good humour, light-heartedness does not keep aloof, and with a fine amity the early departed and now momentarily returned receives his due. The reasons, such as they were, are weighed once more. No summary could do justice to their treatment, and so the only worthy conclusion is with the last words the poet addressed to his Werther.
Verstrickt in solche Qualen, halbverschuldet,
Geb’ ihm ein Gott zu sagen, was er duldet.
(Schooled long in qualms, to sharp ears still half in debt,
Must some godhead say what airs will him abet.)
(Of course this version in English is approximation; it aspires to be nothing else.)
* Later it appeared in the “Trilogie der Leidenschaft” under the title “An Werther.”